What's your highlight? 💡 #131

I’m quite far into Make Time. Aside from taking distractions off my phone (haven’t quite taken Instagram off, and likely won’t), and bulldozing my calendar, what I have really found useful is the highlight, if anything, for my wellbeing.

Yesterday, I had two strong contenders: Cycling with Nathan into the studio, or running with Tim at lunch.

Today, my highlight is going to be getting an article written .

It’s such a simple concept and especially useful if you find life a struggle at the moment. A highlight is very personal, but it could be:

reading a good book before bed 📕

getting that application submitted ✉️

meeting up with a pal ☕️

Just having one thing to look forward to is only one side of it. Looking back at that one thing is also very comforting. It reminds me that I have purpose and I’m not always being pushed and pulled, I get to make time for what I think is important to me.

Thank you for reading and I hope you’re keeping warm and motivated as the seasons change 🍂

-Ross

Also, I’m running training events for people wanting to learn how to run design sprints. More info here.

I’m running an evening design sprint casual meetup in London where you can come, socialise and we’ll also run the Lightning Decision Jam ⚡️ - a better way to start solving problems and turn meetings into workshops.

“But when we saw the final book, our hearts sank. This wasn’t right. The book wasn’t the same format. It was taller, so the dimensions were off. And the translation of our design was a complete hack job. It wasn’t even centered on the page!”

I totally get this. My latest Etch stickers were way too big, but you’ve just got to keep prototyping and moving to learn.

I truly believe that one of my first hires in Etch Sprints will be a growth hacker. There are so many useful tools out there and just putting a few of them together can really reap rewards in not just business awareness but creating incoming opportunities. Favourite tool at the moment for me: Calendly. Every so often, a new email comes into my inbox from someone requesting a meeting. So awesome!

I spend quite a big of time on Instagram. What I do like with Facebook’s strategy, is that they’ve left it well alone (on the face of it!). They didn’t strip it for parts and then let it finish it off (ahem Google Inbox), or take something good and take it away (ahem Microsoft and Sunrise calendar). They’ve listened, iterated and listened again.

This article talks more about the ad revenue, which, from an app that you can really only engage with on your phone and is always with you, makes for some interesting strategy insights.